Hey, who remembers tuning into Red Button for free practice, only for some over-running tennis match to be shown instead? I'll agree Sky's pre-race stuff could be better (having to fit in ad breaks naturally leads to some of this, features have to fit each part and it's hard not to have presenters talking either side of the break) but on the whole paying for Sky with a dedicated channel is well worth it to the frustration that came from missing sessions at random like that.

GP2 and GP3 coverage, plus classic races, just serves to sweeten the deal.

It's nothing to with ad breaks. It's just they employ buffoons like Crofty and Herbert and their production team have ran out of ideas to make their coverage interesting so we just get the same drivel every week. The Sky coverage we got in 2012 was worlds apart from the nonsense we get now.

Over 12 million customers will have access to F1 highlights. If anything Sky's current F1 audience will grow substantially now they can show F1 outside of their subscription channel for free to normal Sky TV viewers in the form of highlights.

That's assuming that the other 12m customers are interested in F1. I know a whole bunch of people who have F1 access but couldn't care less to watch it. If anything all they are capturing is those people without access to the channel on Sky that watch the highlights on FTA. It's not really a sport in the UK that casual people enjoy much.

Over time the subscription will continue to rise as it is for football and I'd imagine less people pay for the channel and opt for the highlights instead.

Terrible news for the teams too of course, how will they get big sponsors when the audience is decimated? And like others, I refuse to pay Sky for their coverage because I think it's terrible. A 'premium quality' service does not employ the likes of Croft, Lazenby and Herbert.

So what's the alternative? BBC didn't want it. ITV/Channel 4 we are unaware of how committed they would be and how much they were willing to pay. What is the sport to do? Give coverage away for free? If the Sky deal is such bad news then what was the viable alternative here?

Over 12 million customers will have access to F1 highlights. If anything Sky's current F1 audience will grow substantially now they can show F1 outside of their subscription channel for free to normal Sky TV viewers in the form of highlights.

So they may go up from 500,000 a race to 750,000? Wow....

Losing the 3million+ free to air viewers that BBC and Channel 4 were getting will kill off the UK fan base just like every other sport that has tried to move to the Pay-TV model.

The commercial rights holder will get its TV money in the short term but everyone else will be hurt by the drop in viewers.

To crosspost from the other thread, F1 now follows the dangerous road to total irrelevance, past the burning husks of so many other sports that sold out to Sky.

Hey, who remembers tuning into Red Button for free practice, only for some over-running tennis match to be shown instead? I'll agree Sky's pre-race stuff could be better (having to fit in ad breaks naturally leads to some of this, features have to fit each part and it's hard not to have presenters talking either side of the break) but on the whole paying for Sky with a dedicated channel is well worth it to the frustration that came from missing sessions at random like that.

GP2 and GP3 coverage, plus classic races, just serves to sweeten the deal.

People said that about Cricket. "You can watch every ball!" Yeah, but it doesn't matter if the audience is down to five men and their dog.

Then the sport will lose countless viewers, Bernie has never cared about free to air, he only cares about money and for some UnGodly reason SKY think they will get all these viewers coming across to them to watch F1, that is NOT going to happen.

Simply put, it measn the end of me watching Formula 1.

And to be honest I ahve hardly watched the last couple of years anyway so I am not missing much

I've never bothered subscribing to Sky, and won't be despite this. So, I'll either have to rely on streams, or (and is pretty likely, given the way things are going in F1 right now) end up losing interest in F1 completely.

So what's the alternative? BBC didn't want it. ITV/Channel 4 we are unaware of how committed they would be and how much they were willing to pay. What is the sport to do? Give coverage away for free? If the Sky deal is such bad news then what was the viable alternative here?

They could just lower what they are asking for so that they get the deals that give them the most viewers, instead of just hunting for short term profits.

Having a large fan base is worth so much more to the sport than the money that Pay-TV deals will bring them.

The thing that I don't like is the hunger and thirst for the teams to be richer and have more money for development etc isn't coming from the teams but from fans. But fans couldn't care less about the budgets of the teams and don't get a say in the budgets either. The manufacturer teams want bragging rights over each other, and will spend £200/£300m to do so, which is fine if you want to finance your spending war via sponsorship and manufacturer contributions, but instead its coming from tv rights and subscriptions which ultimately come out of the pocket of the viewer. Manufacturers can trim back their investment at the expense of the fans and that is why the sport won't last. The sponsorship will dry up too and funding will fall back on tv rights. F1 is in a bubble - I mean employing 1000+ people to put 2 cars on the grid? Having multi-million multi-site factories? Football is the world's most popular sport and teams don't employ anywhere near that level, but F1 which is a niche sport will and that's nuts!

So what's the alternative? BBC didn't want it. ITV/Channel 4 we are unaware of how committed they would be and how much they were willing to pay. What is the sport to do? Give coverage away for free? If the Sky deal is such bad news then what was the viable alternative here?

Ummmm, lower it's prices so FTA channels might be interested and able to afford it...?

Remember, unlike most sports, the inclusion of manufacturers means the teams themselves are trying to sell "product" to the audience.

Tis a rare thing when the consumers have to pay the producers for the privilege of being marketed to...

They could just lower what they are asking for so that they get the deals that give them the most viewers, instead of just hunting for short term profits.

Having a large fan base is worth so much more to the sport than the money that Pay-TV deals will bring them.

So why isn't Moto GP in trouble then? That's been off free to air in the UK for a year now. What's happened to that sport?

We don't know if the BBC even wanted F1 regardless of the price. F1 is a business. Bernie can't let the free to air channels dictate terms and then hope for the best when they examine their budgets each year.. hoping they won't pull out of their deals like the BBC did. Why does the BBC get a free pass in all of this? What they did was far more damaging to F1 coverage in this country than anything Sky has done.

So what's the alternative? BBC didn't want it. ITV/Channel 4 we are unaware of how committed they would be and how much they were willing to pay. What is the sport to do? Give coverage away for free? If the Sky deal is such bad news then what was the viable alternative here?

And how do you know that Channel 4, or whoever, didn't say 'Yeah, I'm interested in bidding for the next set of broadcasting rights'? Sky are a sleazy organisation. I can totally imagine that whoever came up against them meant Sky pummeling another gazillion pounds into Eccelstone's pocket, just to seal the deal.

They had to share before - There was no way the big wigs were going to let that happen again.

MotoGP was never that popular on BBC, and is a far, far smaller sport fanwise than F1, most other sports only get intermittent high viewers like the majors in tennis and golf and the Ryder Cup, the Tour in cycling is a month, the World Cup every 4 years and Olympics

F1 is regular, it is as close to football in terms of reglarity, it pulls in nothng like the viewers, but it is regular.

MotoGP can only dream of those viewing figures, and that sport is run, administered and exsists solely really for Spain, the rest are interlopers. They ahve one personality, once he goes the sport sill suffer immeasurably.

It is on BT sport but deosnt get massive figures, and is insanely cheap, they paid 10 mill for 4 years!!

All you can do as fans is move on, don't buckle, don't pay for it, this is blackmail, nothing more, for a sport that is offering you little in entertainment and even less in appeal, you watch it because you know no better.

Or alternatively, keep handing over your hard earned for a sport that thrives on the rich and gives nothing to the average man, keep paying your insane prices to watch events live, you have been for years and you will continue as you are the prime reason why Bernie thinks he can get away with this garbage. You cant help yourselves.

This is probably why it's going to Sky. The viewers are dropping anyway. Bernie lost the BBC (who can pull in the audience) because he wasn't prepared to reduce the cost (enough). His priority is getting in the money and he obviously doesn't mind if that means losing the audience (and, hence, the future of F1).

This makes no difference, they lost the fans when many of the races went PPV. There is already nothing but distaste and ill will for the sport, I work for a company that manufactures some motorsports parts and noone in the workshop who used to live and breath F1 even bothered watching last weekend.

What is it with F1 and shooting itself in it's foot. Been an avid formula one for nearly two decades it sounds ridiculous that the official f1 app charges for providing live sector times during sessions.

I am not from UK but this monopoly is not good for f1 especially with the sport struggling with dwindling audiences globally. Sky indulges indulges in cheap tabloidesque digs, the pit lane reporters who cannot differentiate a front wing from a rear wing, the commentators one of whom has an agenda to advance every race, the coverage having so many bloopers as far as technical information is concerned.

What is most painful for me is that the loyal fans like majority of the people on this forum who will support the sport irrespective of the **** ups like the recent qualifying fiasco, the technical regulations which are so far removed from real racing are being alienated. Yes formula one needs to cater to a wider audience and bring new people in but the way to do it is to be much more internet friendly, have an option of streaming on the internet for which people can pay and sign up, be much more friendly towards social media and encourage a far more closer interactions between drivers and the fans on race weekends. It is a pity how a couple of commentators on Sky themselves do not understand the technical details. how can you expect them to explain in simple words the workings of a modern formula 1 car, the strategies involved and the ever changing rules of the sport to people who are new to the sport.

For one thing, it'll find making sponsors an even harder job than it already is - particularly in the UK. What sponsor wants to be associated with a sport that is losing viewers, and will be entirely behind a paywall?

With the possible exception of football, when a sport in this country goes behind a paywall, it loses relevance. Fewer people will know about it, or be watching. Fewer people will attend the British Grand Prix, and who knows? Maybe that'll mean it drops off the calendar in a few years.

To those already with Sky, it probably doesn't seem like the end of the world. But otherwise it is a very dark day for F1 in this country.

It's nothing to with ad breaks. It's just they employ buffoons like Crofty and Herbert and their production team have ran out of ideas to make their coverage interesting so we just get the same drivel every week. The Sky coverage we got in 2012 was worlds apart from the nonsense we get now.

Of course it's possible with ad breaks, just harder - especially if you insist on splitting the pre-race into three pre-determined half-hour segments. The way Sky have it atm essentially means any feature has to go in the second of these three segments, with a break either side of and in-between said segment. That limits it to ten minutes max, generally a lot less, and leads to more talking-head time overall. It breaks up the flow of the whole thing, which I strongly believe plays a bigger part in many people not enjoying it as much than they realise. Yes Herbert and Hill droning on isn't brilliant, but a more open format would only help matters.

As for Croft I don't share the same disdain so many here seem to - yes he's a bit shouty in the race but he's better than Edwards, Legard or (ITV-era) Allen, and him and Davidson are great in practice sessions, even if they do sometimes get off on a pointless tangent.

Apart from the ever-more restrictive format though (which I imagine is for the convenience of those recording it - who FFW through the ads and therefore shouldn't be given priority over live viewers IMO), I can't say I remember it being markedly better in 2012 than it is now.

As long as enough people watch for the sport to exist and it is broadcast live then I am happy.

Why does it matter how many other people watch it?

Shortsighted view.

Viewing figures will drop by millions. So that is at least hundreds of thousands of opportunities to inspire children to get in to go karting or to aspire to be an F1 engineer. Lewis Hamilton grew up watching F1 for free on TV, Adrian Newey no doubt did the same thing, alongside every other British F1 driver, mechanic, engineer and team boss. F1 employs a lot of highly-skilled people in the UK, companies like McLaren and Williams are industry leaders in some high-tech sectors, and with most of the teams based here, the government gets a nice big tax dividend from F1. It's obvious that by getting less and less exposure, all these aspects I mentioned will suffer over time.

As less people watch it over time, it becomes less likely new people will come to watch it because there will be less conversations about it, less buzz and generally less exposure. It will be seen as an extremely niche sport, not something that could hook you because it's on BBC 1 on a Sunday afternoon with millions watching live.

Over 12 million customers will have access to F1 highlights. If anything Sky's current F1 audience will grow substantially now they can show F1 outside of their subscription channel for free to normal Sky TV viewers in the form of highlights.

It may grow Sky's audience, but it will still be a reduced audience for F1. The current highlights and half the live races are available to far more than 12 million, so the potential audience will shrink if the current viewing methods are maintained.